2 September 1795

First, for your judgment of authors. Rousseau,
Voltaire, Smollet, Fielding!2 what an insatiable & merciless deity is yours,
who requires that I should sacrifice at his shrine all those persons whom I
have been accustomed to preserve nearest to my heart! If I were to undertake to
calculate the benefits which they, or any one of them, have conferred on
mankind, my powers of calculation would soon sink under the attempt. Honoured
& adorable champions of human nature, human virtue & human happiness!
who have extended the land marks of human science, awakened the best feelings of the
heart, humanized the savage natr nature of your species, given a mortal shock to the
edifices of superstition, & abridged the term of all our worst vices, the
vices of ignorance, ofcontractedsentiment & of bigotry! Ye have
doubled the consciousness of all that is valuable in existence to every one of
your admirers!

But you object, & say, “They have not done
all this in the exact form & manner that you would have prescribed:” you
assure me that “you can spy some spots in the ermine of their honour.”3 Why, so
can I. But I will never forget that their merits towards mankind swallow up
their errors a thousand times told. Generous & exalted spirits! though your
“sins were as scarlet,”4 never, never would I cease to laud & adore you.

Thus far I can almost forget my scepticism
& turn dogmatist; I proceed with some assurance. But I recollect my
scepticism, when I add: First, that perhaps some of their supposed vices are
virtues, & that they did well to free us from the chains of a monastic
celibacy: & Secondly, that there is probably some error in the vulgar notion
respecting these authors, that they greatly excite our looser passions.
Something of that sort perhaps for a moment; but it is some soon gone; lost in the
nobler lessons that they write on our hearts with a pen of iron. No man is
seduced, but by the unbridled play of his own imagination, little assisted from
this side, or by the immoral & licentious companions he frequents. This at
least seems to be pretty universally true of my own sex.

The second point of your letter turns, I
believe, upon Epicureanism.5 If by Epicureanism is meant the grand principle
that pleasure is the supreme & only good, the only thing worthy to be
pursued, I have little no objection to it. But, if we restrain our Epicureanism, as
you do, to self-pleasure, there I beg leave to demur. Rousseau, Voltaire,
Smollet & Fielding, I suspect, never made so pernicious a mistake as this.
First, I can never consent coolly in my own mind to count my interest as of
greater value than that of the whole universe. I cannot consent to be so
egregious a dupe, or so unfeeling & ungenerous a spirit. Secondly, if I
could, I suspect that the man who sits down methodically to theexclusivepursuit of his own happiness, never succeeds;
while the man who practises self-denial & self-oblivion in his zeal for the
good of others, always obtains the sublimest consolations, if not, which I
think more frequently happens, the most enviable felicity.

W G

Sep. 2. 1795

I believe I ought to have mentioned distinctly that I consider the
Yahoo story,aliasthe Voyage to
the Hoynhnms,6 as one of the most virtuous, liberal & enlightened
examples of human genius that has yet been produced.

2 The
Frenchmen Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and François-Marie Arouet
(1694-1778) (best known by his nom
de plume Voltaire), and two British novelists, Tobias
Smollett (1721-71) and Henry Fielding (1707-54).

3 Quotations appear to be from a Hays letter to Godwin, now untraced.

4 Isaiah
1:18.

5Epicureanism
was derived from the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) who posited the
belief (as did John Locke centuries later) that knowledge was derived from the
senses, with the corollary thesis that pleasure is the ultimate good of human
activity.

6 Reference
is to Jonathan Swift's "A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms,"
Book IV of Gulliver's Travels (1726).